Tuesday, April 9, 2024

MGG - 5.07 - HWYD - copters

At another camp, I actually had a guy drop a tree on himself.  This was in a helicopter logging operation, where only the falling was going on while I was there: they hadn't started the actual helicopter yarding.

The fallers were taken out every morning by helicopter.  They were dropped in their locations, and were basically out there alone all day, cutting down trees.  Because of this, the procedure was that they had to be checked every hour by helicopter.  So, once an hour, on the hour, the helicopter pilot would head out and check on them.

It was a fairly boring duty, so the helicopter pilot was glad to have me along for any of the check flights.  (I love, and have always loved, helicopters, even though I know that fixed wing pilots define them as 50,000 random parts in loose orbit around an oil leak.)  I would just ride along with him, enjoying a bit of a break and a helicopter ride, and we could chat a bit while he was checking out the fallers.  The fallers didn't exactly cooperate with this process: for one thing they possibly couldn't even hear the helicopter when it was in the area, and so they didn't always come out and show themselves.  Then there was the fellow that follow who decided to finish cutting his tree before coming out and identifying himself.  Because the helicopter pilot couldn't see him he was flying lower and lower in the area where the faller was working, and when the tree finally came down, it fell right beside us in the helicopter, and missed us by less than ten feet.

And, as noted, one of the fallers managed to drop a tree on himself while they were doing this falling operation.  This was reported by radio, and, of course, I headed out with the pilot to pick the guy up.  He was not badly injured, and was even ambulatory, but he was very sore.

We headed out and picked him up.  Having picked him up and secured him between us in the helicopter, we headed directly back to camp.  As we were doing so, we came over a ridge and almost down onto the blades of another helicopter.  Our pilot hauled up on the controls, and managed not to land on the spinning blades of the other helicopter.  He was swearing at the other pilot, and when he cooled down sufficiently, thought that possibly the other pilot simply had not known the flight that we were on and the situation we were facing.

The other helicopter was, in fact, coming to visit our camp, and so we did find out a bit more of their story.  They *did* know that we were flying in the area, and they did know that we were picking up an injured faller.  They seemed to think that hiding behind a ridge, on the direct line between the camp and the falling area, was the best way to avoid a collision.

Previous: https://fibrecookery.blogspot.com/2024/04/mgg-506-hwyd-first-aid-training.html

Introduction and ToC: https://fibrecookery.blogspot.com/2023/10/mgg-introduction.html

Next: https://fibrecookery.blogspot.com/2024/04/mgg-508-hwyd-accountant.html

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